PARK CITY, Utah — Daniel Sivan and his wife, Mor Loushy, spent most of December in Montreal, and they loved it.

“It really reminded us of Tel Aviv,” said Sivan on Monday evening, the day after their documentary The Oslo Diaries had its sold-out world première at the Sundance Film Festival. More on that in a second.

“It’s much better than Toronto,” he exclaimed, a twinkle in his eye as he continued buttering up his interviewer. “You can write that down. It was fantastic. What a wonderful city.”

Sivan and Loushy were in Montreal to finish post-production on their film.

“We did the music, the mix calibrating, the animation there,” Sivan said. “We worked with a wonderful musician, François Jolin, and a wonderful director of photography, Alex Margineanu.”

The documentary, which digs deep into the initially secret talks that led to the short-lived Oslo Accords between Israel and Palestine in the mid-1990s, also boasts the sound design of Sylvain Bellemare (who won an Oscar last year for his work on Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival).

These and other Quebec connections were made possible by Montreal producer Ina Fichman, who joined the film’s Israeli producer, Hilla Medalia, to bring the project to fruition, landing financial assistance from Radio-Canada, Quebec funding agency SODEC and the Rogers Documentary Fund along the way.

The Oslo Diaries stands out from other films on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by not taking sides — or rather, by taking a side that is all too rarely taken.

In 1992, a small group of Israelis and Palestinians met without official approval in Oslo, Norway, and began what would become 1,100 days of negotiations leading to an agreement that may be the closest the two sides have ever come to mutual understanding.

To many, the Oslo Accords’ eventual collapse following the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995 proved that the talks were a failure and there can never be peace between the countries. Sivan and Loushy believe the opposite, and they set out to prove it in their film.

“You can walk down the streets of Montreal, Toronto, Tel Aviv, Ramallah or New York City and ask people, ‘What do you think about peace in the Middle East?’ Everyone will tell you, ‘Oh, Jews and Arabs don’t get along,’ ” Sivan said. “Of course, that’s simplistic, stupid and most of all racist. It’s not about ‘Jews and Arabs don’t get along.’

“When you really try to give an answer, you realize there have been no films about peace. There have been many about war, but not peace. … That really intrigued us.”

The great feat of The Oslo Diaries lies in its ability to take viewers behind the scenes of the negotiations and, with help from the personal diaries of the negotiators, provide candid accounts of the talks and their feelings about what was happening every step of the way.

The result is remarkable for the way it humanizes the players in both parties, revealing how much good faith there was from all participants to come to an agreement that would not just be accepted by all, but endure.

“Everyone said, ‘A film about peace? Boring, It will be all statistics, about land, clauses, sub-clauses and contracts,’ ” Sivan recounted. “We started searching for how to bring the film to life through a personal, emotional journey. These were simple people, none of them were famous or high-level politicians. But they changed history.”

As the negotations went on, friendships formed, and when the leaders of both countries got involved — although there were tensions — the rapprochement continued. Even Rabin and PLO leader Yassir Arafat approach something resembling mutual affection. For Sivan, it’s proof of the basic goodness of the human spirit.

“In the end, the Israelis were not out there to f—k the Palestineans or find a vicious loophole to prolong the oocupation, and Palestinians are not a group of terrorists waiting for Israel to take their guard down so they can slaughter everybody. Everybody really wanted peace.

“If it happened once, it can happen again. What you see in the film is not just some delusional kumbaya kind of feeling. There were heavy compromises on both sides.”

Sunday night’s screening was an invigorating experience for the filmmakers, who were heartened by the audience response, as well as Sundance’s continued support. (Loushy’s 2015 documentary Censored Voices, co-produced by Sivan and Medalia, also screened at the festival.)

“It’s a great platform,” Sivan said. “Unlike other festivals, it’s not just an industry event. It really feels like people are coming to see your film because they love cinema. They’re interested, they stay for the Q&A and for an hour after because they want to talk and debate. It’s just fantastic.

“People got really engaged. We spent the night later bumping into people who told us, ‘Wow, we were waiting for a film like this.’ For us, it’s very emotional.”

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